


a sinner's prayer

by nante



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Religious, Biting, Blood and Violence, Bucky is a Demon, Catholicism, Demon Bucky Barnes, Demonic Possession, Demons, Homophobia, Implied Murder, Inaccurate Catholicism, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Shameless Smut, Supernatural Elements, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, tony is a deacon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-05-17 04:03:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nante/pseuds/nante
Summary: Tony is a transitional deacon in practice to enter the priesthood.Bucky is a demon looking for easy prey.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i’ve got no idea where i’m going with this i came up with this idea while i was drunk

Quietly, Tony clears his throat.

“Since it is your intention to enter into the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.

The pair before him are completely enraptured with each other--all smiles and love and happiness. Tony forces himself to swallow down his jealousy.

 **“** I, Harold Hogan, take you, Virginia Potts, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

 **“** I, Virginia Potts, take you, Harold Hogan, to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.”

“You have declared your consent before the Church.” Tony lifts both arms up, “May the Lord in His goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined together, let not man separate.”

As Tony steps back from the pedestal, allowing the audience to recognize the end of the wedding vows, and near conclusion of the nuptial mass, he too, watches the newlyweds in earnest admiration.

He had seen neither Pepper, nor Happy in _months_.

Eleven, to be exact.

Eleven long, excruciating months of social isolation, of aversive conditioning, and _prayer prayer prayer. Always prayer._

Tony shakes himself from deepening thoughts, and speaks up to conclude the ceremony. His friends had specifically requested for him to officiate their wedding, and the last thing he wants is to disappoint them on such a treasured day. 

A treasured day that he himself will never have the pleasure of experiencing.

From the corner of his eye, he spots Father Stane near the entrance, and Tony proceeds to stare down his teacher until the attendees of the ceremony have all processed out for celebration. He looks down at the floor once the large oak doors of the chapel creak shut, when he hears Father Stane begin to approach him.

“Are you not going out as well?”

Tony swallows thickly and turns around to begin cleaning the empty chalice on the altar table.

“No. I have this to attend to.” He replies lowly. It’s been eleven months, and there's nothing particularly good about this place that Tony wishes to ruin their wedding day with. He can easily sacrifice a reunion for their immediate happiness. They deserve it.

It's been eleven months, yet he still feels immense discomfort as Obadiah’s beady eyes dig daggers into his back.

“I can take care of that, _Reverend Stark._ Or is it that you don’t wish to face your friends? You have nothing to be ashamed of.” Tony hears the silky brush of two cassocks sliding together before he feels Obadiah’s hand on his shoulder, resting on his stole. “You’ve made wonderful progress for one so young. Truly.”

Tony thinks he’s going to be sick. He wants to be left in peace, as far away from this man as possible. Only he knows there’s nowhere he can go to that's far enough away from Obadiah Stane, especially nowhere near here.

Here, a quaint woodland monastery of Catholic friars who had oh so graciously taken him in during such a  _dire_ time.

As for peace, on the other hand, he hasn’t really seen that in a long time.

Tony prepares to blow out the candles burning on the altar table, but the hand on his shoulder quickly turns into a tightening grip, he can feel Obadiah’s blunt nails pressing fabric into his skin, like he always does, right into the already bruised blotches of flesh. He’s used to the feeling, but he whimpers anyway.

“Or is it that you’ve grown jealous.” Obadiah quickly becomes too close for comfort, and it takes far too much effort to not visibly flinch away from the priest.

A wasted front of effort. Obadiah already knows he’s terrified—loves it.

“It’s still early, Anthony. Have you done your prayers yet?”

“No, Father.” He answers. The faster he tells Obadiah what he wants to hear, the faster the hand on his shoulder will let go, the faster he can clean this up and get to his own devices.

“Then I’m sure you won’t mind me joining you. You can say them now. Out loud.”

“Yes, Father.” Tony’s voice is monotone, but Obadiah doesn’t need to hear it in his voice to see that Tony is physically relieved when the hand on his shoulder is removed.

Tony continues packing up the items on the altar table, placing them in their designated spaces before he walks towards the first row of pews, signs the cross towards the altar, and lowers himself to his knees. Obadiah is watching him, so his eyes stay firmly locked on the floor before he closes them and begins to speak the words that have been drilled into his head since the day he arrived.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” He begins quietly, “As Your Word proclaims it, _thou shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”_

_***_

Tony manages to promptly avoid contact with Obadiah for the rest of the day. He only sees the priest while reciting his evening breviary, and is able to use the excuse of a headache to skip dinner with the rest of the friars present in the convent.

Not being expected for dinner leaves Tony with ample time to kill before the curfew bells ring across the grounds.

He ignores the fact that the sun will set soon, and takes to walking around the grounds to reflect.

Tony is miserable—most people in the convent can tell. Whether or not they realize their contribution to his misery, he prefers to remain ignorant. He’s a sickly twenty-year-old being forced into priesthood. All for kissing a boy.

 _Just over a year ago, Tony’s life was entirely different. For one, he hadn’t been a deacon. He hadn’t been anything but **himself**_ **,** _although now he’s now discovered that “himself” had been increasingly dangerous. Sinful, by definition._

He remembers the night everything had gone completely to hell as clearly as if it was only a day ago.

_“Ty! Cut it out!” His friend had wrestled him to the ground, and Tony had thought nothing of the way Tiberius had straddles his waist as a result of the squabble. They had both been drinking from his father’s liquor cabinet, naïve and hungry for a good time. Tony had met Tiberius at boarding school, and promptly invited his new friend to spend time at the Stark manor when he discovered that their parents were rivaling business competitors. Tony hadn’t expected Howard home that night. It’s why, in their fit of drunken giggles, Tony didn’t stop Tiberius from leaning down and pushing their lips together—why he didn’t stop Tiberius from frotting against him and tonguing his mouth open until Tony was a blushing mess on the floor. It’s why Tony’s heart dropped into his stomach when the dimmed lights were brightened and suddenly Howard was in the doorway of the room._

_“What the fuck, you fairy?!” Ty had yelled after ripping away from him. Tony had seen better days._

Consequently, Howard had him living in a Freudian-inspired, quack psychology center claiming to help similarly sickened youth for a month before he’d been picked up by Obadiah and taken to this convent—in the middle of nowhere, with no contact with anyone but the occasional formality letter from Howard.

What lies he’s been fed, and what he’s been forced to do to aid his “illness” and protect his mind from “the wickedness, schemes, wiles, tricks and snares of the **devil** ,” Tony would rather not recollect on. He’d rather not let it break him down again—not after he feels so damaged already, as if one more tip of the glass will have him giving up what's not meant to be given up.

So he’ll quietly submit instead.

Tony allows, will continue to allow himself to be silenced for as long as it takes to divert attention from and halt treatment for his sickness. He’ll quietly do his daily prayers, fulfill his role in the convent and for the order his father had thought was _a good way to keep the fag out of him_ , and in a months’ time, when he’s to be ordained a priest, Tony will gladly accept the healing hands of God as long as he no longer has to worry about the day he finally breaks.

Tony stops in his tracks to wistfully stare up at the quickly darkening sky.

He supposes that dinner must be nearing its end, meaning his little walk is coming to a conclusion, but part of him—as always when he wanders the acres of land surrounding their convent—part of him doesn’t want to go back.

 _Why would it?_  He has a bitter look on his face as his eyes drop to look instead at the trees around him. _Why would it want to go back to a life he so obviously doesn’t belong to? A life that rejects and spits on who he can’t help but be._

His sudden fit of bitterness begins to fizzle away when the nine o’clock bells begin to sound from tower behind the chapel.

With a begrudging sigh, Tony begins to backtrack on the narrow dirt path he’d initially taken on his walk.

He has a little more than a few minutes before his room is checked for his presence, so Tony quickens his pace until a sudden misstep has him tripping over a large tree root protruding from the ground. Tony stumbles to his side, skinny branches from the small trees that frame the path scratching at his face and neck as he goes down with a small yelp.

He pulls himself up carefully and moves to wipe any dirt from his garments when he feels a slight tug at his left shoulder—his stole, stuck between a few particularly wiry branches.

Tony is pulling the fabric free of the branches when he sees it—unfocused and in the murky distance—a dark figure.

 _A deer?_ He hadn’t seen one so near the monastery in quite some time.

Curious, Tony spares a short moment to squint in the direction of the dark blotch.

 _A little too upright to be a deer,_ he thinks, _or four-legged at all._

With that in mind, Tony yanks his stole free, frowning at the subsequent sound of fabric ripping, before he turns back onto the path and now jogs the rest of the way back.

Luck, probably in exchange for the piece of his stole left stuck in those branches, seems to be on his side, as Tony is able to change into a night robe and settle down in his room moments before Obadiah, without knocking, pushes his door open.

“We missed you at supper.” The man smiles.

Tony hates that smile.

He smiles back.

“I went walking.” The smile drops from his face when Obadiah enters the room completely, clutching something in one of his hands.

“I see. Then you must have dropped this on your way inside. How did it rip?”  
Obadiah is holding the small patch of fabric that had torn from his stole.

The patch of fabric that Tony remembers leaving hanging between those branches.

He bites his lip and takes the cloth when Obadiah holds it out to him.

“It...tore against some branches. I’ll—I’ll sew it right away, Father.” Tony mumbles quickly, looking down at the cloth in his hands now. He hides his confusion with an expression of sincerity _—_ gratefulness _—_ and doesn’t move a muscle in his face when Obadiah grabs his chin and examines his face.

“Of course. And I will see you in the morning.”  
Tony drops the façade with a hefty sigh as soon as Obadiah leaves the room. He points his attention back on the ripped piece of his stole, not exactly knowing what to think besides _how?_

He’s sure it had been left behind, but perhaps he’s mistaken. Perhaps it had only just fallen off of the rest of his stole as he was rushing inside.

Not wanting to dwell on such theories, in fear of becoming even more paranoid, Tony recites a Hail Mary and promptly tucks himself into bed.

It takes only fifteen minutes for his breathing to steady and body to still before sleep overtakes him.

Only, his resting doesn’t last very long.

Six hours later Tony, bleary-eyed and with a dry throat, wakes up with a sudden jolt. He cracks open his eyes, and accompanied with a small yawn, reaches to adjust his covers when they’re suddenly yanked halfway down his small, single bed. The movement, not made by him, has Tony’s eyes wide open, and in a heartbeat, he’s sitting up straight.

That’s when he sees a pitch-black shadow looming over his bed and all at once Tony can hardly breathe.

A choked shriek is caught in his throat when the _thing_ reaches out with what looks like a distorted hand, with long fingers that seem to curl and writhe and stretch longer with each passing moment, and attempts to take hold of his leg.

Tony immediately recoils, snatching his blanket back up the bed after pulling his knees to his chest. He rubs at his eyes, trying to process what exactly it is he’s seeing, but the second his hands are away from his face, the figure is gone. He sits like that, near his headboard and with his knees at his chest for at least half an hour before he’s calmed down.

With a particularly strong inclination to see natural light again, Tony forces himself to fall back asleep within the hour.

***

As he has every day for the past eleven months, Tony wakes up to Westminster Quarters and the soft bustling of men outside his door preparing themselves for another day of the monastic life.

Briefly, he recalls the dream he’d just suffered through on the account that he feels much more tired after waking up than usual.

 _How awful_ he thinks as he throws his covers off of him.

It isn’t until he’s bending down to gather a fresh cassock from his bottom drawer that he notices his leg.

There are five, parallel strips of raised, bright red scars clearly visible on his skin.

Scratch marks, running from the middle of his thigh down to his ankle on his right leg.

How awful indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> & for those of you not well versed with Catholicism, here is a lil something relevant to this:
> 
> “Transitional deacons are seminarians, students in the last phase of training for the Catholic priesthood. After being a deacon for a year, they’re ordained a priest by a bishop.
> 
> Deacons can baptize, witness marriages, perform funeral and burial services outside of Mass, distribute Holy Communion, preach the homily (which is the sermon given after the Gospel at Mass), and are obligated to pray the Divine Office (Breviary) each day. (The Divine Office, Breviary, or Liturgy of the Hours are all the same thing. These are the 150 Psalms and Scriptural readings from the Old and New Testament that every deacon, priest, and bishop must pray every day)”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *has been like a month since i updated on ao3*  
> me:  
> me: i think i'll update my least popular fic!

Since he’s discovered the scars trailing down his legs, Tony can’t help but notice that they also, unsurprisingly, burn like hell.

And besides being responsible for his leg’s now uncontrollable throbbing, he’s got an awful feeling about when the scratches start to scab over and he’s got to bend his knee.

Of course, Tony is also more than a little unnerved, panicky, and  _scared shitless_  about what it is he’d witnessed.

_A black figure visible in the distance—a little too upright to be a deer, or four-legged at all._

In the past eleven months, he’d learned enough about demons to be justifiably frightened.

He knows that they’re dark, hell bound creatures that feed on insecurities, doubts, and  _fear_ , among other things. That demons lie responsible for illnesses unexplained by modern medicine, that they live on the pain of God’s creations and thrive on corrupting them.

Demons are deceivers and destroyers that have blatantly rejected the one, sovereign God, and therefore have rejected absolute Goodness. They are pure alone in embodying perversions, and sometimes hide beneath the flesh of wounded hearts, or lurk on the shoulders of those with doubtful souls.

Consequently, he’s been told that he’s quite fortunate to have not required sessions of exorcism for his own demons—that he’s lucky they had seemingly fled from him when he’d made the right decision of willingly joining the Church and allowing himself to submit to a higher power.

If willingly meant Howard signing his conservator status over a “mentally incapable child” to a cult of men who frolic in dresses and preach to their mutual imaginary friend, then he supposes that yes, it had been willingly.

If resisting had been an option, he knows that he wouldn’t have thought twice about taking it.

Knowing he’s been misdiagnosed as ill and forced into a religious order though, inevitably keeps his instinct of self-preservation embarrassingly low.

It’s why he keeps his mouth shut about the marks on his legs and falsely tells himself that what he saw was just an odd spur of his imagination.

_Or was it?_

Tony doesn’t sew up his stole, instead opting to bury it under the limited arrangement of clothing he’d been provided with.

***

He has since grown used to a Roman collar chafing his neck, wearing it under his cassock is required during service. However hot he may get with the, in his opinion, unnecessary layer, it gives him something to fiddle with when he doesn’t have anything to do with his hands. More importantly, he’s quick to discover that his usual tugging and pulling on the baggy fabric helps to distract him from his inflamed leg.

He has no medicine on the scars, fearing that asking for balm will only lead to questions about why he needs it. The scratches, with the way they’re lined up—parallel and extending up most of his leg—would definitely turn heads.

***

Tony retires to his room early after evening mass, after politely opting out of dinner. He’d been walking—hopefully unnoticeably limping, on his odd injury all day. He at least wants to be undisturbed for as long as possible without anyone finally questioning him.

When he enters his small room, Tony takes a moment to gather himself. He closes the curtain framing the small window near his bed, and is nearly ready to strip from his robes when he hears it. The sound of three footsteps behind him and the creaking floorboards along with it.

Tony freezes, his heart rate picking up. He knows he’d closed his door.

Then he hears heavy breathing. Without giving it much thought, his fear clouding his head, Tony turns around slowly, gagging at the sight he’s greeted with.

But he doesn’t scream. With the previous night’s event on his mind throughout the day, he’d somehow just, expected it. The thing in front of him is of course, the black creature he’d seen on his walk, the same demon that was responsible for his leg that seems to suddenly burn more than it had all day.

The creature opens its mouth—a void of black, inky grime that drips yet doesn’t stain the floor.

The voice that accompanies it is fitting, it croaks, the sound agonizing enough to pierce eardrums, as if someone is scraping forks down a chalkboard and rubbing glass together or dragging a knife down a canteen. The noise doesn’t stop until the creature is lurching forward, piercing the flesh of Tony’s arms as it latches onto his shoulders.  
  
Still, Tony doesn’t scream. He stands there, the tingling pain in his arms and the heavy, uncomfortable feeling radiating off of the thing in front of him, he forces himself to ignore.  
  
He opens his mouth to speak—to say something, anything. Only all that comes out is a breathless wheeze before only the whites of his eyes are visible and the black, oozing creature is slithering and sliding and stuffing itself down his throat until he’s collapsing from a lack of oxygen.  
  
He falls on the floor with a soft thud, breathing in short spurts while his body twitches as if adapting to the sudden forced entity inside.  
  
Tony nearly coughs up a lung, curling himself into a ball as his mind silently goes into overdrive.

He feels dizzy, and he wonders if he can still convince himself that this is all a dream, that his subconscious is finally cracking from the pressures of this monastery that makes him feel sick at heart—trapped like a caged animal forced into captivity.

Hot, wet tears begin to flow down his face.

Everything turns black.

***

The man’s grin rivals harping foxes as he steps forward towards Tony, suddenly too close for comfort and an expression clearly read as too sleazy to care about the sudden privacy invasion.

He has shaggy brown hair, accompanied by trimmed facial hair. He’s built rather nicely—tall with hefty arms. His eyes are an electric blue that takes Tony’s breath away.

Tony can do nothing but stutter and choke on any words daring to come out. He’d just been collapsed on the floor. If he remembered correctly, he’d just been unconscious—so where in God’s name did this man come from? And how did he black out, only to end up standing up straight feeling perfectly fine?

He can barely string together a coherent thought before the man quickly leans forward and presses his tongue to Tony’s face, licking a stripe up his cheek before pulling back with a kiss to the corner of his eye. Tony tries to jerk away, only now noticing the hand firmly set in place on the small of his back, and the other on his shoulder. He had been crying before losing consciousness, he remembers.

“You—“

“I’d really rather you not waste those.”

The man stares at him for a little longer, as if drinking in his fear, revelling in it—if the expression on his face is anything to go by.

“This form you’ve given me. Your preference is...suitable. I suppose it hardly matters. As long as your eyes are pleased.”

Tony chokes. “I-I didn’t—“

“Oh please. Sit with me.”

He doesn’t get another word out before he’s being led—dragged—to an elaborately large, red cushioned loveseat that must have quite literally appeared from thin air.

“Where did...” Tony begins. His voice is less shaky, less fear-filled, the surrealness of the situation slowly beginning to settle. For some reason, he feels a little too comfortable.

He lets out a sudden breath of air as he’s pushed down onto the couch, the fabric of his robes splayed out around him.

And then there’s a heavy weight on his lap. The man—the  _creature_  is sitting on top of him, straddling him.

_Draining him? Distracting him._

Tony gives a quiet sigh, the sudden clarity from just moments ago fading. He still feels the same sense of comfort. He feels warm, the throbbing from the slashes on his legs, the pricks on his arms seem to radiate a different type of heat.

**He hears an eerily familiar voice yelling his name, accompanied by a sudden, echoed shriek of terror that _almost_  has him shoving the mystery man off of his lap.**

But then there are lips covering his own, meshing and slotting and pushing and melting against him in a way he can only describe as positively unholy.

One thought dominates his mind.

_I’m kissing a man._

For as long as he’s been in this godless monastery,  _everyone_  has seen him as a broken boy lost in the devil’s playground.

As he feels a hot, questionably  _non-human_ tongue prod deep into his mouth, Tony guesses they were right.

As easily as that, he forgets the echoed scream, the yelling, the sudden appearance of the loveseat. Instead, his mind wanders to the night in the woods, the figure at the foot of his bed, the pulsing scratches trailing down his leg, the punctures on his shoulders-- _the heat in his gut._

It’s surreal, and he loves it.

***

It seems like a blur, how quickly his clothes are discarded and he’s thoroughly being taken apart on the little couch. When he manages a glance at the floor, he doesn’t see any of his robes, almost as if they’d disappeared. But as quickly as he’s expressed any type of confusion, there’s a tongue wrapping around the base of his cock while a hot mouth sucks the head. He doesn’t even think to question it, letting out yet another guttural moan that distracts himself from surfacing troubles.

He can’t help but roll his hips forward, mumbling for  _more, more, more_ , until two clawed fingers dig down into his hips to pin down his show of neediness.

And when the tongue slides off of him, all that’s on his mind and escaping his lips are cries of greed and whines of gluttony.

Tony lets out a lucid, bubbly laugh when he’s lifted up onto the man’s lap. He can feel a cock between his ass cheeks.

“They—they told me I shouldn’t have. W-With Ty. That I’m sick. They tell me—they—I’m a dirty  _faggot_.”

The man stops his fluid movements for a short moment. Clawed fingers brush his bangs from his forehead. “They won’t. Not anymore. Never again, darling.”

And then they’re moving again. Tony can’t recall using anything for lubrication, but there’s no searing pain or uncomfortable dryness. All he feels is a sudden wave of pleasure, the cuts on his body burn in an unspeakably good way. He feels so hot and deliriously good that he can’t help the tears that begin to leak down his face as he’s lifted up and dropped down again and again.

“Your tears belong to me.”

Tony hears the words, only has little time to process them when he feels that same sensation from the previous night—sharpness raking down his skin, only this time, the two hands dragging down his back feel much more personal, much more intimate.

With one more cry of pleasure, Tony again sees black, his vision blurs as he cums, his body twitching in pleasure. The last thing he feels is the man’s teeth sinking into his shoulder.

***

This time, recovering from his blackout is much, much different. For starters, he has to drag himself off of the ground, and close his eyes for clarity. When he opens them, it’s clear that he’s no longer in his room. In fact, he’s a safe distance away from any of the buildings. His white robe—it’s no longer just white. Instead, it’s damp and stained with blood, littered with splatters and rugged with small slashes and black smudges. On the ground beside him, lies an equally as bloodied kitchen knife.

The monastery is crumbling—artfully burning down to the ground it was built on.

Tony stands in silence, simply watching.

He can feel the clawed skin on his back, and the throbbing of the bite mark on his shoulder.

_For dust you are, and to dust you shall return._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cant believ i initially wanted to have this be like 5 chapters omg when i started writing this chapter like a month ago i was like.........5 chapters... of religious shit.............no
> 
> so i hope you enjoyed possessed tony getting fucked by demon bucky in his subconscious instead
> 
> also yeah no one can tell me that tony wouldnt fuck a demon
> 
> please comment/leave feedback!


End file.
